"Everyone
has equal rights to a delusion, since not everyone has the same ability or the same
courage in attaining knowledge".

This site is dedicated to making some of Panagiotis (Panajotis) Kondylis's voluminous work available in English.

Anyone who knows Kondylis's writings well in either German or Greek will appreciate that Kondylis has produced books and articles of unparallelled value in relation to the history of ideas, and in particular the European Enlightenment; general or macro social theory; the theory of knowledge; conservatism and political terminology emanating from Europe including during the 19th century; liberal modernism and mass-democratic "postmodernism"; the theory of war; international affairs; as well as in relation to a number of other more "specialised" topics.

as well as the articles:

"The German "special way (Sonderweg)" and German prospects"

and the short book consisting of three sets of questions answered in writing, i.e.:

Kondylis's answers to 28 questions put to him in the last years before his premature death.

FOR NEW READERS OF KONDYLIS WISHING TO SERIOUSLY COME TO TERMS WITH KONDYLIS'S THOUGHT, START BY STUDYING CAREFULLY HIS ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS (e.g. 1, 3-6, 12, 14-16, 19-20), PARTICULARLY BEFORE TACKLING POWER AND DECISION OR "SCIENCE, POWER AND DECISION".

Next, in the event the translator finds the strength and motivation and does not opt to engage in the pleasure of merely being a reader of Kondylis's, and other, works,

The Political and Man (Das Politische und der Mensch)

will be presented in toto within certainly no less than six to eight years (as of 30-12-2014; Chapter I was completed on 17-10-2015. Translation of Ch. II commenced 18-11-2015 and was completed on 02-02-2017; Ch. III commenced 27-2-17). This is, for those of us who know, the most important work of macro social theory published since Max Weber's Economy and Society and it is an absolute tour de force in terms of length and scope. One could even argue it is the greatest book ever written (depending of course on what one values in relation to books).

THE POLITICAL AND MAN - PAGES TRANSLATED: 247 (360) of 652 (37.88%) (238 online) Chapter I and Chapter II are online

Note: Chapter II, Section 3 constitutes a high point (if not the high point) in the history of general social theory!

Chapter III Sections 1A, 1B are now also online

In the more distant future, this site's author would hope to translate or at least would hope to see translated:

The Enlightenment in the framework of new-times rationalism (Die Aufklärung in Rahmen
des neuzeitlichen Rationalismus),

The decline of the bourgeois thought form and life form. The liberal modern era and the mass-democratic postmodern era (Der Niedergang der
bürgerlichen Denk- und Lebensform. Die liberale Moderne und die
massendemokratische Postmoderne),

[unfortunately, a translation of Kondylis's first book: Die Entstehung der Dialektik. Eine Analyse der geistigen Entwicklung von Hölderlin, Schelling und Hegel bis 1802, cannot be contemplated as a possible translation project given that the above list of works will almost certainly not be translated in toto]

Any enquiries or comments concerning
"Kondylis in English" should be directed to:

The translations should not be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the
express written permission of their author, C. F., who can be contacted through the
email address above.

I note that my main motive in producing the translations is a deep appreciation of the honest attempt at achieving "value-free" (or "axiologically free") knowledge in the social sciences or humanities(i.e. knowledge that is descriptive, explanatory (theoretical) and ethically, not methodologically, non-normative (regarding method: empirical verification (or e.g. reference, in the case of the ideal type) and logical consistency, but nothing more, are sine qua non))- something little appreciated in institutions of "higher learning", by and large staffed by people involved, more often than not, at best in sophisticated cultural critique or insightful microanalyses, but alas more commonly, in the reproduction of (moralising) normative ideology, if not complete and utter nonsense. The translations are not "easy-to-read" English texts, they err on the side of faithfulness to the German text, yet at the same time it is hoped that the English reader will not be disuaded from developing a genuine interest in Kondylis's thought. It goes without saying that even the best of translations are always poor substitutes for any original text, particularly if we are dealing with a body of work at the peak of human achievement - the translator wants readers to know that the text they are reading is "faithful", but is also a translation.

Anyone who particularly values Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Max Weber (as well as many other remarkable thinkers or "observers of human affairs" - Aristotle, Montaigne, Hobbes, Spinoza, Clausewitz, and Marx readily come to mind*) will probably become very fond of Kondylis's work.

The reading will be (very) difficult, but the gain in knowledge immeasurable.

[*Because almost inevitably most great thinkers in the social sciences and philosophy display both varying degrees of empirical and logical-argumentative weaknesses or even serious flaws, as well as all their strengths and insights, or at least while maintaining their value as "negative" polemical points of reference, those I have named are just a small list which could very easily be expanded to include: the great classical historians (Herodotus, Polybius, Livy, Tacitus, Appian, Priscus et. al.), the Sophists and Plato, La Rochefoucauld, Montesquieu, La Mettrie, Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Kant, Tocqueville, Nietzsche, Pareto, Durkheim, Simmel, Schumpeter, E. H. Carr, Mannheim, Aron, and many, many others: from Epicurus, Duns Scotus, Occam, Bacon, Galilei, Descartes, Rousseau and Comte, to Locke, Vico, Diderot, d'Alembert, Holbach, Turgot, de Sade, Herder,W. Dilthey, Tönnies,Husserl, Bergson, G.H. Mead, E. Cassirer, Leopold v. Wiese, Karl Polanyi, T. Parsons, Hans Morgenthau, J. Burnham, J. Plamenatz, K. Waltz, H. Bull, G. Arrighi, P.M. Kennedy, G. Kontogeorgis, J. Mearsheimer and so on and so forth.]

This site is reproduced with further links at:

www.panagiotiskondylis.wordpress.com

Kondylis in historical context:

Kondylis’s oeuvre draws together all the main strands in the social sciences (historical science, sociology, the humanities etc.), philosophy and the history of ideas, which contain the elements necessary for someone to engage in absolutely consistent science (as far as the human-social sciences are concerned, consisting of three main overlapping branches: history, sociology, social ontology (incl. anthropology)). In other words, where “post-modernism” in its various forms draws on aspects of the thought of e.g. Nietzsche, Freud, Boas, Marx, Weber, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, et al. - apart from reflecting, recycling and reconstructing thought patterns emanating from hedonistic-consumeristic (massifying and atomising, levelling and equalising) Western mass democracy-, and correctly acknowledges the relativity of values, and the perspectivity (historicity) of knowledge, but errs in maintaining a relativity of knowledge, notwithstanding its own claims to knowledge and irrefutable empirical and logical criteria, as well as usually adhering to some kind of normative programme and having certain aesthetic preferences, Kondylis managed to build on the great Western tradition of empirical observation and logical coherence, to the extent it has existed, in order to produce a body of work which essentially brings to a near as humanly possible completed high point or "perfection" what thinkers like Aristotle, Marx and Weber (Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz et al.), at least in part or albeit imperfectly, sought to achieve with regard to understanding human societies at a macro or general level: description and explanation of what is, without, so to speak, contaminating the description and explanation of reality with an ought. It goes without saying that absolutely consistent knowledge of the Is is politically-polemically only partially useful, because human societies and the individuals that comprise them exist per definitionem in various forms of ideological (and usually less frequently, physical) struggle over Ought- apart from the quantitatively insignificant exceptions, who can also observe human affairs consistently dispassionately. Kondylis's oeuvre therefore constitutes the ideational (ideological) domain of the few.